The PSP, from a handheld perspective, it’s more of a 13-17 year old [demographic], multi-ethnic, a bit lower-income as well. The PS3 is still in its early adopter phase, tech-oriented consumer… they’re interested in the multi-functionality of the system.

SONY: Everything is fine. We’re sure the market is going to abruptly change any minute now to something which is more favorable to us, without us having to do anything.

The console is two years old, and Sony is making the excuse that it’s in the “early adopter” phase to explain why sales are so low. Two years into the lifespan of a console system is not “early”, as measured by any lucid party. This excuse is madness, but only if you view the PS3 as a console gaming system. If you view the PS3 as a blu-ray player, it makes a lot of sense, because video formats change more gradually, and we are still in the early-adopter phase of blu-ray.

Which is how I think Sony has viewed this all along. Their real goal was to win the format wars, since controlling the format of video content for the next decade is worth far more than having a respectable share of the console market for the next six years. They put the blu-ray player in the PS3, thus driving the price through the roof. Thus less were sold. Thus less developers wanted to make exclusives. Thus the main selling point of the PS3 – its super-powered processing abilities – went to waste, since only exclusives are going to be engineered to actually take advantage of all that extra power. Thus the system was even less appealing to people who just wanted a system for playing games, continuing a dreadful negative feedback loop.

But for Sony it’s still a win, because blu-ray won, and it won early. I’m not saying that having the blu-ray built into the PS3 is what won the format wars, I’m saying that Sony couldn’t afford to leave it out.

It makes business sense, although now that they’ve won the HD format war their behavior in regards to the PS3 has been slothful and unfocused. Their plan seems to be to announce that everything is fine on a regular basis, without really doing anything to close the gap with either of the other two consoles. I’d like to see them offer something to rival Xbox Live, gamertags, or the achievement system. (I know they have the trophy system, but it doesn’t look to be tied to anything like an account or gamer profile which can be shared. Without a gamertag, you have to just tell people you beat Explodious 3 on super double-hard. The system tracks your accomplishments, but it doesn’t give you a way to share them, which is what makes the system social and perhaps even viral.)

The thing is getting marginally cheaper to produce, which is nice, but even if they cut the price to Xbox 360 levels (which is extremely unlikely) they still don’t have a way to woo potential customers who are shopping for a console gaming system, or who might already own one of the others.

I am still a huge fan of the PS2, and it’s still my favorite of the previous generation. But a large part of the appeal of that system is the vast library of quality titles. The PS3 can’t ride the coattails of its predecessor because they dropped most of the backwards compatibility. And it can’t hope to build a library of its own if it’s sitting in distant third place. The tale of the dusty, underused PS3 is a common one.

Dear Sony: The current realities of the market are working against you. You will need to do something if you want this to change.

Topic for discussion: If you own more than one gaming platform (PC, Gamecube, Playstation, Xbox, Wii, etc) which one gets the most use?

Answering my own question: Out of the PC, Gamecube, PS2, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii in this house: The Gamecube gets the least use. Even before the Wii came out, the machine just didn’t have enough titles to keep it in business.

The Wii gets the most, with my wife and kids keeping the machine busy on a regular basis.

ya know, i don’t have any up to date numbers or anything, but i seem to remember that the ps3 was being out preformed by the ps2 still not that long ago. sales wise, that is.

and i recently picked up a [new] ps2 game that came out last year.

i have a 360 as well, but I’ve been selling off most of the games and using the money to buy ps2 games… go figure.

ultimately, i bought a next gen consoles for a very select group of games [dynasty warriors, final fantasy, bladestorm, a couple of others]. when all the big names worth touching [at least in my opinion] are non-exclusive, what’s the point in buying the big expnesive one?

actually, the whole PS3 thing seems like an exercise in ‘how to fail at being awesome without losing fanboys’

I said all of last year that I thought the PS3 was released a bit too early. Winning the format war may be the reason why they did it. Without that factor, I think they may have waited a year or so to release it. Although I did expect this year to be much better for them. They still aren’t acting like the PS3 has launched. They aren’t recruiting developers to their system or even providing support for the ones they have. They aren’t putting out polished first party games. And the price point is still too high. They really need to put backwards compatibility back in. Once they do all these things, they need to re-launch. Although, my hope that all this will happen is swiftly fading.

The funny thing is that John Koller quote, is that you could write a long debate about the PSP part as well. I don’t know for certain, but I would guess that the PSP is actually selling much more to “tech-oriented consumers.” It suffers from the early adopter syndrome (UMD discs) and complicated, diverse unnecessary features (music/video player, internet browser, phone). Because of this it is getting trounced by the Nintendo DS, even worse than the Wii is beating the PS3.

Sony might eventually reap the profits of the High Definition format war, but they are going to struggle to get there. They are rumored to be posting $1.1 billion lose for the past year. Granted it is only the first lost in the past 14 years, but that is a lot of money to be losing. It will be hard to keep competitive trying to rebuild from that kind of money trouble.

The thing about the format war is that Blu-ray may also be on the losing end by the end of it. It seems most people are content with regular DVDs and digital distribution and streaming seem to be the way it’s all going with content on the whole. Cheap HD movies for rent over a streaming service… Who will want to buy the Blu-rays aside from those who buy Music on DVDs?

I have several other systems, including a Wii, SNES, Genesis, Master System, etc, but it would be kind of hard to put them in an organized list. If you want to envision what it might look like, put the Genesis and SNES toward the top and the Wii towards the bottom.

Also, I think I’m going to start calling my Wii a “thin GameCube” from now on. I don’t really use it to play Wii games anymore. :/

Edit: @Lebkin:

I don't know for certain, but I would guess that the PSP is actually selling much more to “tech-oriented consumers.”

I think the main reason that the PSP is selling as well as it is can be attributed to the relative ease of playing homebrew on it. If you see someone playing a PSP, ask them what firmware they’re using. In my experience, most of them will tell you something like “5.00 M33” or “5.02 GEN.”

I don’t even bother playing UMD games on my phat PSP. I always rip them and save them to a memory stick to save battery power. I know the main reason I avoided a PSP was because UMDs destroyed battery life, a good secondary reason being that UMDs tend to be bulkier and more fragile that cartridges, making it hard to carry a bunch with you in your pocket. That’s a nice way of skirting around that issue.

When it comes to portable systems I play my PSP a lot more than my DS. Most of the fun games that I have for DS were either wildly overplayed by me and are no longer particularly engaging (Meteos), games that are typically good for one playthroughs a year at most (the Phoenix Wright series, Hotel Dusk, etc), or games that are simply mediocre. I’m more attached to the PSP games that I have, whether they’re UMD and homebrew titles.

Things might balance out if I ever got one of those fancy R4 cartridges for the DS, or whatever the good ones are called nowadays.

Last time round the PS2 flat out won the console war. I believe that’s generally accepted.

But this time round – nobody’s the clear winner. I think this is because each console is fighting a differnt battle.

The PS3 was fighting the DVD format war – which it’s won.
The X-box was fighting the online war – which I think it’s certainly winning if not won.
The Wii was fighting to break out into the mass market – which I think it’s certainly done.

“Winning” the video format wars is only relevant if the blu-ray format as a physical media is adopted. I think it much more likely that streaming video/digital media is much more likely to be important in the next ten years than any physical media.

Not that blu-ray will be unimportant, but I think the blu-ray vs HD was a false war, with things like Netflix and boxee coming up and showing us how it can be done completely differently.

My lack of buy-in on the PS3 as blu-ray player is the largest reason I don’t own one. (And if you take that out of the sony price-argument, then the value drops considerably, IMNSHO).

In answer to your question: we have a PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, GameCube, Wii, and an Xbox 360 (the Xbox died). The Xbox gets almost 90% of all the play time between netflix and video games. The Wii is next when company is over, mainly. The PS1, Dreamcast, and GameCube are in the basement gathering dust (the latter largely b/c I can play those games on the Wii). THe PS2 will get turned back on when Persona 4 gets here.

PC: I’m a WoW gamer
PS3: for DVD viewing 80% of the time, Rock Band 2 for the rest
Xbox360: I have more games for this system but the computer usually wins the war.
Wii: almost never see’s use now that we got a 100lb coffee table. How dumb is that?

Sony’s stated goal when they brought out the PS3 was to have it be more than a gaming system, but for it to be the centrepiece of your entertainment system. Releasing it with the Blu-Ray DVD player was an extension of the strategy for the PS2 (where they introduced the ability to play DVDs on the console) to make it more than just a gaming console. But, yeah, they’re hurt by a couple of things:

1) Dropping the backwards compatibility (although I’d heard there are rumours about a “new” system that would be more backwards compatible).

2) HD not dominating as much as people had hoped it would.

For me, I originally bought the PS2 because there were some types of games on it that I couldn’t get on the PC and I needed a DVD player, so it was a good buy. But I’m not getting an HD TV anytime soon, so have no need for an HD DVD player, and don’t want to get a PS3 if it can’t play the PS2 games that I love. There’s little that’s PS3 only that I really want to play.

To win, they need the backwards compatibility, even if it makes things cost more …

PC: LOTRO and CSS (Most of my gaming time is still spent here)
PS3: Rock Band 2 (350 songs, gotta love it), LittleBigPlanet (So addictive), Movies (Media Shared from PC, Blu-Ray, DVD)
Wii: When I have friends who want to play, but getting more rare.
PSP: Only when travelling (Remote Connecting to my Media Share mostly)
PS2: Collecting dust except when GH 1 or 2 calls my name
GameCube: Saving for when my son turns 5.
N64: Saving for when my son turns 4.

I have found myself turning on the PS3 much more than I used to a year ago to actually play games now. Rock Band was the only thing I turned it on for previously, but now with MGS4 and LBP out I find myself turning it on much more during the week. My weekend evenings are LOTRO time, with CSS being a Wednesday Gamenight feature…PC will always be tops for me…until I can use a mouse and keyboard for shooters.

In my own house it’s the PS2 first: The Guitar Hero series, being released with versions that work on both PS2 and PS3 was a good move and makes it our party game here. Then I just have more titles for the PS2 then any other console.

Next the PC, but that is a distant second really.

And finally the Xbox. It got a short burst a year back when I got a number of titles from a friend who upgraded his xbox to a 360 and then found a handful of games wouldn’t work but it has once again been reduced.

I do have vague plans to upgrade to a PS3 at some point in the future, and I will do so long before I get a 360 because of my catalogue of games.

My own PC only sees action for the swarm and click games and with Dawn of War’s Soulstorm corrupting the previous versions of the game on my system I’ve had no swarm and click game of the current generation take over my spare time.

—
I should just add that if you count in Tabletop wargames like Warhammer Fantasy then it wins in amount of time spent. I put in twenty minutes a day painting ten models with a single colour, a rate that takes me about four months to finish painting an army. The games themselves take an hour to three to play and I get in a game every other week. But I also play warhammer by email, taking pictures of the battlefield and sending it to a player in a different province.
That is another 30 to 40 minutes a day after labelling and uploading. So the warhammer game gets 40 hours or so a month out of me, almost double my ps2 game time.

We have a PC, a Mac, a Wii, a Gamecube, a PS2, an original Nintendo and an iPhone in the house. This is the order of how much use each gets from most use to least.

1. iPhone
2. Mac
3. Wii
4. Gamecube
5. PS2
6. Original Nintendo
7. PC

I am surprised on how much gaming I do on the iPhone, especially since I haven’t paid for any games on the phone, only downloaded free games. The Mac gets the second most use because that is where we have Spore and Civ IV (Spore being a big hit with the wife and sone increases its use significantly), the Wii is no big surprise, the Gamecube gets more use than the PS2 because my 10 year old son still loves many of the “party” titles. The original Nintendo still gets played about once every two months or so. The poor PC sits collecting dust and only powered up when I find a specific piece of software that I need for work that has no Mac option. That only happens about twice a year. It is almost never used for games since I played Star Wars KOTOR.

When I thought about this list, my biggest surprise was the iPhone but now that I have given it some thought, it shouldn’t have surprised me. Live Poker is addictive.

I’ve have a PC and an XBOX260. That is the first console I have ever owned.
I bought it because:
a) Not as many good PC titles coming out lately
b) My wife wanted to be able to play games WITH me, instead of just watching me play PC games.

What it is used for now, 60% of the time is devoted to playing DVDs. :D

However, it is serving to introduce my wife into the realm of gaming, something she is new to. Which is neat. :)

As far as games go, I think we mostly use the 360, but I spend far more time on the PC doing other stuff…..

Mainly because my Xbox is on the main tele and its easier to pick up the controller than to go sit on the PC , yes I am too lazy to walk 5 feet. Also there arnt any games out on the PC I really want to play, although DoW2 is out at te end of the month so that will boost my PC time a little.

There is just such a gap in the amount of games for each system it is just a lot easier to get something I want for the xbox.

I’ve got X360, PC and PS3.
Gaming-wise PC gets the most use, as I regulary play City of Heroes MMORPG with my friends.
Next is X360. I mainly buy games for it, as I prefer its controller.
I bought PS3 just as a Bluray-player, and it gets a lot of use in my home theatre. I guess you can play games with it, too, but I’m not interested in PS3 games.

Regarding streaming v. HD content, until bandwidth becomes cheap enough that we can stream 1080p smoothly, I won’t regret my Blu-ray player. Or even my HD-DVD player, for that matter; it’s given me my money’s worth since HD-DVDs run $5-$10. I can see where streaming services would seem adequate to those who haven’t had a chance to see the difference, but after watching a couple movies in 1080p, I’ll never buy another standard DVD, or be satisfied with the resolution of streaming movies.

PC: I’m a WoW junkie.
Wii: I don’t have a lot of games, but I love Mario Kart Wii.
PS2: The backward compatibility was a HUGE selling point when I got this–upcoming library + existent library of PS1 games = profit!
DS: Except that it’s broken and therefore being overtaken by
PSP: FFT mainly.
NES, SNES, GameCube, Dreamcast, Atari 2600: In a box.

Add my voice to the chorus decrying the lack of backward-compatibility in the PS3. Still, the price is the biggest reason I’m not seeking to own one (especially considering the things I want to play are not exclusive). I’ll get a 360 one of these days.

@shamus: “for the next six.” I’m not a native speaker but I think you are missing “years” here, otherwise it would be “six decades” and your point would be pretty moot.

@topic: Nintendo DS, definitely. Long train rides several times a week are a large contributor to their business and the PSP is unacceptable due to it’s pathetic battery charge. As for stationary “consoles”, I’ll go PC.

My major gaming consoles are a Wii, a PC, and a DS. The PC gets the most love at the moment, but only because I’m currently in the throes of a nasty WoW addiction. *Twitch*

The Wii hasn’t gotten much love lately because there haven’t been many releases recently to write home about. I picked up Wii points over Christmas to download the rest of the Strong Bad games and Megaman 9, but I have yet to get around to them.

The DS has received so little love from me in the last 6 months. I used to play it on my 45 min. train communte, but now that the commute is cut in half, I’ve no reason to play it. Plus, most of the games I see at the stores for it anymore look awful. I just have no idea what to buy for this thing.

Oh, and I do have an old PS2 sitting around, but I can count on one hand the number of games I own for it. I mainly bought it to play Final Fantasy 9/10 and the dot Hack games. The former were a good investment, the latter a mixed bag.

PC is number one in my house. Followed by the PS3 (mostly because we play Rockband on it!). Next is the DS which my wife plays when she’s out. Finally we have the Gamecube (which we hardly play anymore since we got Lego Indiana Jones and batman for the PS3 to fulfil our family time needs).

PC (Wow only) > Wii > DS > PS2 (also as a DVD player, I’d really like to use the wii for this, but alas, it cannot) > Gamecube.

Still, I love my gamecube games, but I have “replaced” nearly all of them with their Wii-pendant (Zelda, Super Smash Brothers, Metroid and Mario Kart) and therefore don’t play them anymore, the console itself is in a shelf, since I can just play the games on the Wii (which I did: Metroid Prime 2 for example). I do not have any xbox or PS3, and I also don’t know what I would use a PS3 for. There are practically no games I would want. And I can only name 3 titles in the PSP that are of interest to me (even though that portable is out for about 4 years now).

Interestingly, a friend of mine bought a PS3, exclusively for Blueray playback, I don’t think he even owns any game for it. So yeah, Sony pretty much dumped their 6.5th generation console in favour of a blueray player.

I only own a PC and a PS2. I still play some console exclusive games thanks to some nice friends, so I don’t lose out too much by not owning these expansive little machines.

Out of the two, it’s difficult to say which has the most use. Right now, the PS2 is collecting dust, but a few months back I was catching up to a lot of older titles on it, while the PC had hardly any game installed.

Some people have mentioned the fact that there are (much) more games for Xbox360 than for PS3, but I was under the impression that most titles were released on both platforms, and console exclusive were pretty rare. It does seem like there are less games on Wii, which is nice because it makes it so much easier to borrow one to play Mario Galaxy or Twilight Princess.

I feel like PC is the losing one in terms of new games, getting few, buggy or delayed releases, but it’s been around for a long while now so there’s a lot of good old games to choose from. These games are cheap, and don’t need me to upgrade the computer with top-of-the-line parts, so I’ll cast my vote for PC.

Hm. Technically I have a GBA, N64, PS2, DS, PC, and Wii around. I won’t count the GBA and N64 since they haven’t been turned on in years.

1. Wii (Sports and Guitar Hero for social gatherings, as well as a library of one-player titles I’m working on)
2. PC (A smattering of mostly puzzle games, like Portal, World of Goo, and Crayon Physics)
3. DS (Still have a handful of games to work through)
4. PS2 (Two Disgaeas and Odin Sphere to finish before I call it obsolete)

1) DS : Plenty of replayable titles, including Tetris DS, as well as just having the most variety of any current consoles.2) Wii : I have just enough titles for variety, plus it’s the first one I’ve had with wireless controllers. Mostly it’s SSBB at this point, though.3) PC : At least a weekly romp in UT on a specific server. I also play some networked Flash games on Whirled as well as an occasional Diablo 2 romp.4) PS2 : It’s the exclussives, period. Katamari Damacy was fun. The Kingdom Hearts games are great. A couple other titles round it out.5) GBA SP : Yeah, I still play GBA titles. Think of it as a spare battery to the DS. Also required for connected titles.

I have a PSone hanging around for a couple of titles incompatible with the PS2, though I could have replaced those Final Fantasies remakes with GBA / DS remakes by now.

The Gamecube sits except for use as a Game Boy Player. Unfortunately, a component cable is necessary for moving it from the CRT it’s currently on to a LCD due to analog signal processing lag. (Yeah, new tech isn’t better at times.)
At $70 per cable off of eBay, though, it’s no wonder I still use my GBA SP, instead.

Our 2600 was dragged out every few years, but it really has become more cumbersome than it’s worth doing so. Our 800 is set up, but infrequently used. Overall, other interests are slowly taking over.

In my opinion there are two things that won the format war for sony. One is the decision to make the PS3 a blu-ray player and the other is their control of so many movie studios.

I would love to own a PS3 so that I can play the occasional PS3 exclusive that I actually care about and also have a Blu-Ray player. I would buy it if it came under 300 bucks.

But I would still buy any multi-platform game for my 360 if for no other reason than I like the controller better. The games usually look and perform almost identically and I’m already a LIVE subscriber, so the free multiplayer argument doesn’t really factor in.

Sony would probably lose a ton of money on me because I’d buy maybe 2 or 3 games a year for PS3 until their catalog gets better. They would make some of that up on Blu-Ray sales, which is what i would use the system for 90% of the time.

@K: “a DVD player, I'd really like to use the wii for this, but alas, it cannot”
Actually, it can, you just have to play around a little. Google for “twilight princess hack” which will let you install the homebrew channel, then google around for the Wii dvd player software.

Of the potential gaming systems in my apartment, only the 360 gets any use (though I’ve also got a PS2, Gamecube, original Xbox, and a PC — though with a video card that’s far removed from cutting edge, so not so much on the gaming part).

But for Sony it's still a win, because blu-ray won, and it won early. I'm not saying that having the blu-ray built into the PS3 is what won the format wars, I'm saying that Sony couldn't afford to leave it out.

The thing is that I’m pretty sure not only could Sony have afforded to leave it out, it would have been much more profitable to do so. Without Blu-Ray in the PS3, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD would have spent a few years battling it out in expensive videophile-oriented players, and they wouldn’t have lost billions on the PS3. Microsoft wouldn’t have cared at all about the format war. It’s extremely unlikely that HD-DVD would have won the format war conclusively by 2010 (and without Blu-Ray, the PS3 would ahve been out with the 360 in 2005), so if Blu-Ray hadn’t won by then, they put Blu-Ray in the PS4, and maybe cut deals with MS and Nintendo for their next-gen consoles to go that way too.

The 360 lost its place of prominence on the list (which it had taken from the XBox when I purchased it together with Halo 3, which in turn had help prominence since its own purchase just before Halo 2) when my brother-in-law got me hooked on WoW. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

We own a Wii, an XBox, and a PS2. The PS2 sees some use as a DDR-based exercise machine, and the Wii comes in #2 for Wii Sports, the title that shipped with it and is STILL the most fun for Lena and I to play. #1 is far and away the XBox, which we use exclusively as a DVD player since our old one died.

We probably will get a PS3, but not until we can afford a new TV. It will mostly be a Blue-Ray player, playing games will only be a nice extra.

(Oh! I forgot my Mac! That would really be #1. I do play WoW and I use my computer for work all day too. Move everything else down a notch.)

I’m defs a PC gamer. Games like Mount and Blade, Medeival 2 Total War, KOTOR, Mass Effect, Sid meyer’s Pirates! to name a few.
Of my other consoles (Wii, gamecube, ps2, n64, genesis) I use the Wii most. My dad, on the other hand, has a soccer game for the Gamecube that he just loves. PS2 only gets any action when my sister and I want to play Star Wars BattlefrontII together, or either one of us lapse into a final fantasy mood. The n64 and the Genesis arent even plugged in anymore.

For me, it’s the PC (variety of things, but City of Heroes is top), then 360, then PS2. I actually don’t think I’ve turned on the PS2 in a year, and once I can afford a better TV and Rock Band, the 360 might be overtaking the PC.

N64 gets the least use, due to the fact that the colors refuse to work right on any of our TVs, followed closely by the Wii, due to the lack of a decent library. The 360 gets the most use, both on it’s own and playing Xbox games, but I prefer to play Xbox games on the original Xbox due to it being better placed for regular play.

We have two consoles (XBox 360 and Wii) and a PC that’s so outdated it couldn’t run a modern computer game if I beat it with a stick. That just changed at Christmas however, as we bought a new bottom of the line Dell Inspiron which has something like 50X the computing power of what we formerly had in the house. So our usage stats are likely to change. I am intrigued by City of Heroes and, since I’ve never played a MMORPG before, that may be worth a look.

PC
Wii
I play my old gamecube games on the Wii now, but I think that still counts as Gamecube
Although the PS2 had many good games, the gamecube had a handful of really great games (metroid, fire emblem, RE4), which made it more suited to my style of play, which is to play the best games many many times. (I don’t have the money for mediocre games, which is unfortunate since that’s all they release now.) I don’t like FPSs (except Metroid), so the 360 loses a lot of its appeal for me. PC will always be my favorite, since my favorite genres are, in order, puzzle games, strategy games, and RPGs, all of which are dominated by PCs.

I love it when I get asked about multiple gaming platforms. We collect video games and consoles (and fun extra merchandising things like Harvest Moon plushes). This fall we actually got a PS3. (Of course, this meant our whole setup had to go HD, but that’s a different post.) We specifically found a used 60GB PS3 so that we had at least some backward compatability- even though we have the other systems too. It’s hard to repair old game consoles later on. Because of this, we bought a blue-ray player as well (found one of those $180 deals) so that we wouldn’t burn out our backward compatible PS3 by watching movies on it all the time.

We even have a few blue-ray discs. Netflix was already making our DVD purchases lighter and so I doubt we will ever buy as many blue-rays, but we will have some. I can’t wait to see Sleeping Beauty, for instance. :) Even Transformers was worth watching again in Blue-ray. It’s preeeeety. (Keep in mind, we project onto a screen- so our Blue-ray is preeeeety and biiiiiiig.)

As others have noted, switching your setup to HD does make things difficult for “older” systems (Gamecube and prior, I’d say). We’d decided to keep our TV when we switched to our non-HD projector because the 8-bit systems didn’t work well, so we were already dealing with this. :(

So what do we play? Depends on the night. Half the week is usually dvds (Yay, Battlestar Galactica!), the rest is on the 360, whether it’s Rock Band or whatever my husband and his friend are playing co-op shooter-wise (Kane and Lynch at the moment). We did have to replace our 360 with one that had an HDMI port, and I made him put in Assassin’s Creed after that. preeeeety.

One of my resolutions this year is to (use? do? play?) Wii Fit every day it’s at all possible. So the Wii will get more use than it was getting. Beer and Bowling are still fun, though. :)

Anyway, I have something to add to the Sony discussion, but I’ll do that in another comment.

Edit: I forgot! My husband plays a fair amount on his DS and our son likes Lego Star Wars on the GBA SP. The PSP gets used a little, and every now and then I break out my DS. (I played while waiting in line to vote!)

The PS3 does 1080p innately, and has since its launch. The 360 does 1080p, and has for a while, but didn’t initially.

If you look at the resolutions on their games, you will find that very few PS3 games do 1080p where the majority of 360 games do. I think some of those 360 games came out before the 360 could handle the higher resolution! (I might be wrong, I don’t remember off hand.)

It’s another way in which Sony has not taken advantage of what they had in a gaming system, and not something you’d think of unless you’re trying out a new setup and want to see how everything looks.

Off topic, I’ve gotten a 403 error when I first tried to post those last two comments. Then when I tried to submit the comment again, WordPress “detected a duplicate comment”. Dunno if anyone else has gotten this, but I thought I’d alert you. It’s an error that’s not.

PC, followed by the Wii in distant second, though Wii fit means it gets more use by the wife. PS2 sits underused, and as nice as XboxLive and gamertags are, Steam + Achievements is just as good, and my PC drives over 4 million pixels on a 30″ screen 1.5′ away, with 5.1 sound, a comfy leather chair, and really nice input. My tv has <1/10th that many pixels (albeit on an 80+” screen, 7′ away), and while the chair has a footstool, I’ll never play a shooter, rts, or Civ game with a controller. The console is for party games and the like, and it gets a fair amount of use for those.

I own a gaming PC, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, and a Wii. Out of all these, The PS3 is currently getting the most attention. This would be because I just got it for Christmas. I just finished Valkyria Chronicles, and am currently playing Disgaea 3. When/if I finish Disgaea, I’ll be moving onto Prince of Persia or LittleBig Planet.

PC gets constant use, if not gaming, then as a primary internet tube. The Wii gets moderate use, with Wiiware games like SBCG4AP. I haven’t touched the 360 in months, and the PS2 has been disconnected and put away. I’m not trading it in because the PS3 isn’t backwards compatible, so in I get nostalgic at some point, I can get it out and play some older games.

I used to have a Gamecube, but when I got the Wii, it was given to a friend who had neither.

EDIT: I also have a DS and PSP. The DS gets a little use every day. The PSP gets used when I want to use the DS but it’s charging.

EDIT2: I also have a GBA SP, but I don’t use it unless I get a serious hankerin’ for some really old Gameboy games.

1) Wii. I can buy games, play most of my gamecube games, and buy downloadable games.

2) Gamecube. I bought the gameboy player for it so I could play the gameboy games on the big screen. Now that I have the wii I use the gamecube for gameboy games almost exclusively. I find it a lot easier to play like that than staring at an unlit 2-inch LCD screen.

3) PC. It’s had intermittant issues ever since I tried to install Vista. Vista is gone now, but the problems it caused remain. Only low-tier 2D programs work properly now. &@#%*@&* draconian DRM… This will change once I get it fixed.

4) gameboy. A few of my games use it as a sort of widget. (Remember Tingle from Windwaker?)

I looked at xbox and ps, but most of the software they put out are the bloody, gory games which I can’t stomach. I chose nintendo specifically because it has far fewer of those types of games and more titles that I can play.

Instead of the ps3, I bought a cheap LD/HD/BR combo player that is working very well for me.

Since I got my 360 for Christmas 2007, it’s been the leader with games like Mass Effect, Bioshock, Assassin’s Creed, Force Unleashed, Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, and (now) Fallout 3. There have been spurts of PC gaming over that span, with Half-Life 2 & the Episodes (sounds like a band name), Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Call of Duty 4, as well as finally finishing System Shock 1 & 2. When I can break my Fallout 3 addiction I’ll get back to the original Baldur’s Gate (first time through).

Seeing the list of games there and the relative “newness” of what I decided to play on 360 rather than PC, it should surprise no one that my video card is 4 generations old (GeForce 7950), and that more than anything else drove the purchase of the 360. I’m still mulling over whether BioWare’s Dragon Age will be enough of a temptation for me to weather EA’s limited-install DRM, and if so I’ll finally be in the market for an upgrade.

PC (mostly because of strategy sim games)
PS2 (the PS2 and the Xbox traded places not too long ago)
Xbox
Gamecube (which likely wouldn’t even be in the list if it weren’t for the plethora of intellect consuming Japanese games that the kids love)
Dreamcast (yep, seriously. It’s unhooked at the mo because we’re in a state of flux but until recently it still got serious playtime)
all others

As far as the PS3…well, honestly, we’re shopping for one right now. The 360 is still in the “hmmm..not sure” category due to RRoD and other hardware stability issues. But the PS3 that we’re shopping for is one of the 20 or 60 GB varieties that has full hardware backward compatibility and is primarily intended as a second PS2 for the household with the added bonus of having the ability to play PS3 games. It’s still a toss-up between a PS2 and a PS3 with cost being the primary deciding factor (depends on what we end up actually casting a winning bid on at eBay, essentially.) Yeah, that’s how “serious” we are about a PS3. If we can get one cheap on eBay that still plays all the old games we’ll get it. As you point out, the primary draw of Sony consoles lately has been the library and the PS3 doesn’t even have the library to draw us in unless it has full backwards compatibility. Way to go, Sony.

What amazes me is that the Japanese consumers have even abandoned Sony on this one. That’s always been their biggest market for consoles but even in Japan they’re lagging way behind with the PS3. I never thought I’d see the day.

The PS2 saw use just before xmas. The GameCube last saw use 2-3 years ago. I am fairly sure I HAVE fired the N64 up in the last 5 years, but I honestly cannot remember when (that was for a spot of Perfect Dark 64). The PS1 has not been attached even to power since August 2002.

I’m not an uber-gamer like most folks here, but I have a PC, a PS2, a PS3, and a Wii. I just got the PS3, so that currently holds the top slot:

1. PS3
2. PC
3. Wii
4. PS2

Now it really depends on what you consider PC usage, because I spend most of my waking life in front of a PC. I’m not playing games most of the time, but since the PS3 is also a blu-ray player, I’m not playing games on that all the time either. So I suspect that once the honeymoon is over with the PS3, the PC will regain the top slot. Then again, I’ve been duly impressed with the PS3 and have spent most of my free time playing games on there. Even games I wouldn’t expect to be all fired up about, like Resistance, have been keeping my attention. So the PS3 has already exceeded my expectations, and really the PC wouldn’t be number 1 because of gaming. Most of the games I play on my PC are relatively old. I mean, the most common game I’ve played on my PC recently is Return to Castle Wolfenstein (the online multiplayer bit, which is fun), which came out, what, 7 or 8 years ago?

I barely play my Wii anymore, though I do admit it’s a superior system for playing games with family and friends. But most of my gaming is single player, so it usually just sits there. My luck with single player games for the Wii is mixed at best. I hated (HATED!) Metroid Prime III, never got into Zelda, had mixed thoughts about No More Heroes, and actually enjoyed Super Mario Galaxy (but not as much as I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed, Resistance, or COD4 for the PS3 though). I also got Guitar Hero III for the Wii, but was annoyed to no end that there were no downloadable tracks (like there are for the PS3 and Xbox). To give you an idea about this, I didn’t play my Wii at any point from August until December. And even in December, I only played for like 2 hours. Contrast that with about 3-4 hours a day with the PS3 (something I never did with the Wii).

As a movie nerd, the PS3 is also pretty freakin cool. I had my doubts about Blu-Ray, but am really enjoying it so far. Given another couple years, it will blossom. The biggest issue right now is that the catalog of available movies is relatively small. This will get much better with time though.

I guess, I’m pretty much Sony’s ideal customer. I like gaming and HD movies hold enough of a sway over me that the PS3 is worth it. But then I suppose I’m pretty unusual as well…

I have two platforms: a PC and an NES. The NES sits in a closet, so the PC is definitely the leader on this competition. I keep meaning to get the NES out of the closet though, if for no other reason than to play Tetris on my roommate’s big television.

In our household, the XBOX360 gets the overwhelming majority of the gaming time. We still have the PS2 around, for increasingly occasional use with a handful of titles like DDR and Guitar Hero Rocks The ’80s. And I guess the PC technically counts as our tertiary gaming system, though I haven’t used it in that sort of capacity in a month of Sundays. Used to be a primarily-PC gamer person some years back… but once we finally committed to joining the modern gaming world and getting ourselves a current-gen console, I could not leave behind the whole morass of upgrading video cards and dealing with driver incompatibilities fast enough.

Oh – and we also dragged our old 8-bit Nintendo out of mothballs and hooked that up to the big-screen TV, just for the hell of it. Turns out that the dumb thing still works, looking none the worse for spending two decades of chilling in cold storage. Awesome! Makes me wonder where my old VIC-20 is and if it’s in similar straits as well….

(Grammar nitpick: The lines in the original post should read, “Thus fewer were sold. Thus fewer developers wanted to make exclusives.” The less-vs.-fewer distinction is something that nobody but me will care about, I know, but figured it was worth dutifully reporting on all the same, if only for future reference with that sort of thing.) :)

As to answer your question, I’d guess that my PC gets the most use, both in general and as a gaming console. Though most of the games being played on said PC are either WoW or free Flash games on Kongregate. Other than that, the usage factor kind of defaults to the Wii, since I pretty well only use my PS2 for DVD watching (which I haven’t done in quite some time) and most of the rest of my consoles and handhelds have been gathering dust over the past while. I think it’s due to a general feeling of disappointment across the entire industry more than anything. Nothing appeals to me much these days.

If you’re anything like me, if you watch a couple movies on Blu-ray your opinion of upscanned DVD will change. I watched Lord of the Rings last night and kept thinking that it looked like crap. Can’t wait for that to come out in HD.

ETA: I, too, get the 403 error, and do every time I post. I always just blamed my employer’s firewall.